


Pictures

by reveetoile



Series: Creating a new family [3]
Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 00:23:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9409097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reveetoile/pseuds/reveetoile
Summary: A little look into their life together and how Nagase tries to find a picture of his mother for Kazu.





	1. Chapter 1

“Dad, why are you unhappy?” Satoshi asked a few days later, and Nagase looked up a little confused.  
“Why are you awake?” he asked instead of answering, and Satoshi shrugged a little. He was thirsty and just wanted to get something to drink, but that was not important right now. He was more worried about his father.  
Nagase sighed a little and smiled then sadly. “I am just frustrated. I got finally the things they could rescue out of Kazu’s old home. It is less than I have hoped. I knew clothes and all that wouldn’t be usable, but I hoped I would find a few pictures at least.”

“Pictures?”  
“Of Kazu and his mother. For him to remember her,” he explained, and Satoshi came to sit beside him.  
“But isn’t it better for him to forget all about his mother? He is young my teacher says that children in that age mostly don’t remember what happened to them,” he mumbled, and Nagase shook his head.  
“It’s true. Kazu will forget slowly about his mother probably. He won’t remember her voice or how she looked. But he will remember that she was part of his life, a very important role. She will never leave him, Satoshi. Just like your mother. He will miss her embrace and her warmth, her laughter and how she smelled. But unlike you, he can’t close his eyes and remember the things he did with her. He is too little to remember much. He will just feel empty, and he will never be able to fill that part. He won’t be able to visit her grave, too. She will be buried in Japan and not here, like your mother. He will have nowhere to go.”

“I’m a little envious, though… I wish I wouldn’t miss my mother so much and remember her so often,” Satoshi said, and Nagase hugged him close.  
“But unlike him, you have a lot of happy memories with her. Many pictures to look at and even a few videos, Satoshi. You will never forget her as much as he will. And I’m sure he will miss her even in five, ten years just like you miss your mother, and by then he will just have subtle memories of her. Memories he won’t be sure if they are true or not because he can’t verify them.”  
Satoshi was silent for a long time and shuddered when he thought about it. He missed his mother a lot. Satoshi remembered her whenever he heard a song she liked or when he drew a new picture and knew he couldn’t show it to her. He missed her when he was cold and lonely because Nagase was at work, but he could remember how she would play with him, run with him to the sea and hold him in his arms.  
Kazu didn’t have that, and suddenly he wasn’t envious anymore but sad and felt bad for even thinking like that.

Nagase hugged him close and stroked his back. “You don’t have to feel bad, Satoshi. Your feelings are normal and understandable. And it is fine if you think that way. At least you didn’t say anything in front of Kazu, mh?” he smiled and kissed his forehead. “Parents are an important part of our life. We will never completely forget them even if we perhaps wish we could. And it’s fine to wish for it.”  
“I don’t want to forget my mother! I just thought it might be easier if Kazu could,” he whispered and Nagase nodded. He wished for the same thing sometimes, but he also wished for both of the boys to never forget their beloved mothers.  
“I know, Satoshi. I never thought you wanted to. Don’t worry.” Satoshi nodded and scooted back a little to look at the pictures with Nagase.  
“May I help looking for a picture?” he asked shyly, and Nagase nodded with a smile.  
“Of course. But not today. You should try to sleep once more. Tomorrow is school, and you should be a little more awake for that. But in the evening when Kazu is in bed we can look through them together. I will try to reach his grandparents again. Perhaps they have a picture that isn’t too old that they could send us,” he mumbled hopefully. He would even beg them for it. He wanted at least one picture for Kazu to remember his mother.

He smiled at Satoshi though and stood to take him back to bed and put the covers over him. “Good night, Satoshi.”  
“Good night, dad,” he answered and closed his eyes. His thirst was completely forgotten once he laid back and heard Nagase leaving the room.

 

Nagase sighed deeply when he came home the next evening. For the whole day - at least whenever he had time in between his reports - Nagase had tried to call Kazu’s grandparents to get a picture of their daughter. But all he got were accusations that they had let their daughter die. They weren’t interested in their grandson, and Nagase had to admit defeat in the end. He couldn’t call them anymore without fearing to annoy them so much that it brought problems. So the rest of the day he spent looking through the things they managed to rescue from the apartment of the family with no real success. Nagase was glad when it was time for him to go home.  
On his way, he fetched Kazu from the kindergarten and smiled when the little boy hopped happily at his hand and told him all the things he did in kindergarten. Nagase was glad that Kazu liked being there and didn’t cry so much anymore whenever he had to leave. Slowly Kazu believed that they would always pick him up. 

“What do you want to eat?” Nagase asked when they entered a supermarket, and Kazu looked around curiously.  
“Sausage, spinach and mashed potatoes. And ice-cream, please,” Kazu added in the end.  
“Sounds good. Should we buy the ingredients?”  
“Uhn!”  
They wandered through the supermarket and bought everything they needed for their dinner and of course everything else they would need for the next few days. After paying for their groceries, they went home.  
“Is Toshi back, yet?”  
“I don’t know, Kazu. Perhaps he is out with friends. Or he is home and waiting for you.”  
“He said he would show me a new dance. I want to learn it and get as good as Toshi!”  
“Oh did he?” Nagase asked amused and ruffled his hair carefully. “Then he might be already back and waiting for us. Satoshi always does what he promises you, right?”  
“Yup! Toshi is the best.”

At home, Kazu was a little sad to see that Satoshi wasn’t home yet but decided then to help Nagase with their groceries to put them away. Nagase gave him a cut apple and Kazu went to the living room to concentrate on some drawings while Nagase began their dinner and did household courses till Satoshi entered the room.  
“Toshi!” Kazu cried happily and ran to the older boy. He hugged him, and Satoshi laughed a little before hugging him back with the same vigour and ruffled his hair.  
“Hello there. How was your day?” he asked him and tickled him a bit too so that Kazu giggled.  
“We played in the kindergarten. We were allowed to stay outside almost the whole time. It was awesome,” Kazu explained and Satoshi nodded understandingly. “Then me and Tomo went shopping. We bought things to eat.”  
“Wow, you did a lot then, huh?” Satoshi asked, and Kazu agreed again.  
“Will you show me now?” he asked hopefully, and Satoshi blinked confused at the question. He needed a minute or so to remember his promise to teach Kazu a dance and nodded.  
“I will. But I have to put away my things first. Do you want to come with me? We have to get you out of your jeans and into a more comfortable pair of trousers, too” he explained, and Kazu agreed excitedly. He followed Satoshi first into his room to get some new clothes to wear and then to Satoshi’s room where Satoshi put his things in their right places and changed his clothes. Of course, he helped his little brother who was wriggling around helplessly with his new shirt and ruffled the soft strands of hair that were standing in all directions afterwards.  
“Dad said we could use the living room since it’s the biggest room. We have to be careful, though, ne?”  
“Okay.”

They went into the living room again, and Satoshi needed a minute to program their stereo and moving the table away. Then he warmed himself and his little brother up before Kazu sat on the floor with an excited cry as Satoshi showed him the new dance once before showing him one move after the other more carefully so that Kazu could copy him the best he was able to.  
It was fun to watch Kazu wriggle and dancing around in the living room. The boy was still a bit uncoordinated and fell on his butt more than once. But his bright smiles and laughs were infectious so that Satoshi had a lot of fun as well even if it was a bit more annoying to repeat all the moves that often till Kazu understood them and was hopping along as good as he could. 

They stopped when Kazu was all sweaty and breathing heavily, and Satoshi rushed to the kitchen to get them something to drink. He had totally forgotten about drinks before beginning their ‘training’ and felt a bit bad about it now. But Kazu seemed to be okay once he gulped down the water and got a little rest. And he was still smiling happily up at him.  
“That was fun,” Kazu said, and Satoshi ruffled his wet hair.  
“It was. You were good,” Satoshi praised him and looked up when Nagase came into the room and grinned amused at Kazu’s proud face at that praise.  
“You should take a bath together. I will heat up our dinner now. So we can eat when you are finished. Will you two be okay alone?” he asked, and Satoshi and Kazu nodded both.  
Satoshi didn’t mind to bath with Kazu since Kazu was small enough that there was a lot of space for him too. And Kazu loved bathing with him since they would play around while Nagase was just looking after him so that he wouldn’t drown alone in the big tub. So bathing with Satoshi was mostly his preferred choice. They chased each other to their rooms to get sleepwear and then again to the bathroom where Nagase had already let the water in so that they didn’t have to wait.


	2. Chapter 2

After dinner, Kazu went to bed where Nagase read him a story till he fell asleep. Then he met with Satoshi in the living room. The boy was looking up from his writings and sidled up to his father when Nagase sat down on the sofa.  
“Did you get a picture from his grandparents?” he asked directly, and Nagase sighed deeply.   
“No, sadly not. Kazu's grandparents don’t want to give one away since they don’t believe that Kazu is their grandchild. They are a bit hard headed. Perhaps it will change when they aren’t that sad about the death of their daughter anymore,” he explained, and Satoshi pouted a bit. Kazu was cute, and he couldn’t understand that there might be people who didn’t want to get to know him. But he said nothing and just cuddled a bit with his father. 

“And what will you do now dad? Won’t you be able to get one another way?” he asked carefully, and Nagase sighed before untangling himself from his son to get the envelope where he put all the materials from the site.   
“Here are the things they could rescue and are allowed to give away. I didn’t look at it properly yet because I didn’t have enough time. If we are lucky, we will find something that we can use or get restored so that we can use it.”   
“What does restoring a picture mean?” Satoshi asked a bit confused, and Nagase smiled for a short moment.  
“It means that if we get a picture that isn’t fully intact but enough so that one can see how she looked like we can give it to some specialists who might be able to replicate the destroyed parts and put it together.”  
“Sounds good. Can we look if we find something?” Satoshi asked, and Nagase nodded with a smile.   
“Of course. Can you clear the table? Or do you have homework yet to finish?”  
“No, I was practising the hiragana you gave me. It’s difficult,” Satoshi pouted, and Nagase laughed a little.   
“It was you who asked me to show you all about Japanese. Including writing,” he reminded him softly, and Satoshi agreed reluctantly. He wanted to learn it because he was sure Kazu would want to learn writing too if he could speak so well and he didn’t want to be left behind.   
Besides, Kazu was instantly calmer if someone talked to him in Japanese if he had a bad dream or something akin to a panic attack and Satoshi wanted to be able to calm him down whenever needed. He packed the papers into a folder and put it in the little cupboard in their living room before kneeling on the fluffy carpet before the table as Nagase put the things he had carefully on it. 

They were both very careful as they looked at each sheet of paper they found. They put away some pictures that showed Kazu as a baby and toddler - one even on a hand that could be his mothers, sadly the adult was cropped out, and Nagase put away some letters the woman wrote. Some seemed more like a diary than a message to anyone, and he thought that Kazu might like them when he was old enough to read them. But sadly there were little to none pictures of the woman that had to be Kazu’s mother. They found one or two that showed her profile or her figure, but they weren’t the clearest pictures taken. Satoshi almost cried in frustration and Nagase sighed as he put an arm around his shoulders.   
“It will be okay,” he promised. “I will try to talk to his father. Perhaps he has a picture in his wallet or something, mh? Many parents have pictures of their loved ones with them. We could be lucky.”  
“But he killed her! Do you think he loved her that much?”  
“I don’t know, Satoshi,” Nagase hummed and kissed his forehead. “But I have at least to try. Otherwise, we can show the pictures we have to someone who might be able to draw her only from that. So don’t give up yet, okay?”  
“Okay. If you say so.”  
“I do. Now I think we should head to bed. It’s late, and even if you don’t have school tomorrow, you shouldn’t stay up that late.”  
“Yes, you are right. Good night, dad.” Satoshi kissed his cheek and went to his room. Nagase put away the pictures and then followed Satoshi to wish him a good night properly. After he made sure Kazu was still asleep and Satoshi really in bed Nagase went to his bedroom to try and get some sleep before Kazu would wake up early in the morning because he couldn’t sleep anymore.   
Luckily Kazu had begun to slide into his bed when he awoke from a nightmare or because he heard a sound or something like that and cuddled to Nagase a bit to calm down and keep warm. Sometimes Kazu was able to fall back to sleep if he did so and slowly the faint traces on his face and evidence of fatigue vanished from his face and stance. Nagase was more than happy to have managed that Kazu got healthier with each day. 

In the end, it took Nagase days to get a decent picture from Kazu’s father. It was a picture of the three of them, and Nagase knew that he wouldn’t be able to give it to Kazu like that. He had to have the man cropped out of it. The shock over everything he did was too big for Kazu to be able to look at his father.   
Nagase shook his head and forced a smile on his face when he arrived at the kindergarten that day. He looked around, and his smile got more genuine as he found Kazu who was sitting at a table with a few children and a kindergarten teacher and was making a picture out of iron beads. It seemed to be hard work for the boy who had a look full of concentration on his face with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his lips while he took the small pearls as carefully as he could to place on the form. He laid a finger on his mouth when the teacher saw him and motioned to Kazu.   
He would wait till the boy finished his picture as not to destroy the hard work he had done till now. He took a few steps back to be out of their line of sight and leant against the wall to wait for a little while longer. He looked up when a woman appeared in front of him and nodded at her in a greeting. 

“Do you want to drink a cup of coffee, Mr Nagase? Kazu will need a few more minutes, and we would be able to have a talk?”  
Nagase frowned a little at that but nodded as he followed her into one of the bureaus of the teachers. “Is something wrong with Kazu?” he asked as soon as the door closed and the woman shook his head albeit a little-troubled expression on her face.   
“Not really. Nothing to worry too much about at least. But Kazunari is here now for a few weeks, and we have seen things that are not quite normal, to be honest,” she said, and Nagase relaxed a bit. He knew there was a lot that wasn’t completely normal with Kazu for most people.   
“I see. What is the problem?”  
“He gets angry at others sometimes when they play family or house,” she explained. “On other times when he plays peacefully with something alone, and other children get loud or even bicker suddenly near him he pales considerably and hides most of the time under a chair or table. We are worried for him.”  
Nagase nodded and massaged his nose for a moment. “You know that he was abused by his father and watched his father setting his mother on fire,” he began carefully, and she nodded. Of course, she did. Nagase himself told her and the two teachers responsible for this group himself when he first asked for a place for the boy here.   
“Yes, but he never seems upset because of it. He never talks about it.”  
“He gets very upset when he is reminded of his parents. But here he does so many things that he mostly thinks of other things. When people play house or family, he reacts strangely because he can’t cope. His family wasn’t a good example for such things. Children mostly portrait their parents in those games or what they experienced at home, as you know. So, of course, he gets angry sometimes because it all seems wrong to him. He talks to me about that sometimes. Mostly though with his therapist. How he lives now is not the best example for a family, too, so yeah. He gets confused and angry. And of course, he gets scared when people are suddenly loud beside him if he doesn’t realise that there is anyone near him or what exactly happens. All he knows is that: When someone gets loud, they are angry. And when they are angry he gets hurt.” She nodded and frowned a bit. 

“Okay, I almost thought so. But I wanted to make sure. So Kazunari visits a therapist?” she asked, and Nagase nodded.   
“Yes, we are down to once a week finally,” he explained carefully, and she nodded in understanding.  
“I’m sorry if what I said was unnecessary then,” she mumbled. “But we don’t have many children with such a background here.” Nagase nodded. He knew that. There were a few childcare centres that probably would know more about how to handle children like Kazunari, but the children there mostly didn’t have anyone else. He wanted these places for those who didn’t have any other support.   
“I know. And it isn’t unnecessary. I’m happy that you look after him. It’s just I can’t help much. Sadly. There are things Kazu has to learn on his own with time. I can only hope that you will give him the time he needs to understand that nothing will happen to him here.”  
“Of course.”  
Nagase smiled and nodded as he stood up once more. “But now I should probably go and see Kazu before he thinks I forgot him, huh?” he joked only slightly. He did his best to be here on time each day and not be the last parent to get Kazu. He had been late a handful of times because of work or something other and Kazu almost panicked then. So they all tried to avoid that. 

He entered the classroom of Kazu’s group and smiled when he realised that Kazu was finished with his picture and sat now on a high stool right beside the counter and watched the teacher pressing a hot iron on it so that Kazu could take the little artwork with him.   
Kazu saw him almost immediately when he entered and hopped from the chair to ran in his arms. “Tomo!” he cried out happily, and Nagase ruffled his hair.  
“Hello, little one. Ready to get home?” he asked, and Kazu shook his head.  
“We have to wait! I made a picture. I want to take it back. It’s for Sato,” he explained, and Nagase nodded after a moment.   
“I see,” he answered thoughtfully and bopped his nose. “Then we can’t do anything than to wait till it is ready, ne? Did you clean up already?” Kazu nodded proudly and led Nagase to the place where he was sitting before to show the man that he had put all the things that away he used.  
“Wow. Good boy. Shall we ask Mrs Kent if the picture has cooled down then?” he asked and Nino nodded before he went over to ask his teacher who smiled softly as she gave him the finished piece.   
“Be careful. It’s still a bit warm and could break. You have to wait until it’s all cool ne?” she explained, and Kazu nodded seriously before putting it in his hands carefully. His eyes were wide in wonder because the cool pearls he worked with before were now really warm and it was nice to hold them between his fingers.   
“The holes are gone,” he observed, and the teacher agreed.  
“Yes. We melted the plastic a little so that it holds together. If you turn it around you can still see where the holes were.”  
Kazu did as he was told and grinned a little. It looked funny. He thanked the woman and then ran to Nagase to show him and went outside to change to his outdoor shoes and put on a warmer jacket and a hat against the wind before they left to go home.


End file.
